Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

Public Understanding of Science, Technology & Economics

Theater

Over the past fifteen years, the Foundation has developed a nationwide theater program with participants in many regions anchored by two main New York City partners—Ensemble Studio Theatre and Manhattan Theatre Club. The aim of this program is to encourage leading theater artists to explore scientific or technological themes, to write works featuring scientists, mathematicians, or engineers as major characters, and to stage plays with dramatically engaging high-quality science content. To date the theater program has received over 2000 submissions for new plays, and of those it has commissioned more than 220 works, and staged more than 60 plays in New York City alone, with dozens more travelling to theaters across the country, helping to establish a new genre of science theater.

The program has also supported New York-based Playwrights Horizons to develop and stage new works--commissions have been awarded to Lisa Kron and Christopher Kyle, and production support has gone towards Itamar Moses's play Completeness. Sloan's theater program has also provided funding to QED, which chronicled the life of Richard Feynman and played at Lincoln Center; Radiance, about Marie Curie which premiered as part of the World Science Festival before moving to the Geffen in L.A.; and Copenhagen, about a meeting between Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg that opened at Broadway’s Royale Theater.